


Read My Lips

by kenzz_95



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Academy Era, Deaf Character, Deaf Jim, Friends to Lovers, M/M, discord made me do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29368656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenzz_95/pseuds/kenzz_95
Summary: 5 times Leonard wanted Jim to hear something, and 1 time he didn't
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 19
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not me ignoring my WIPs again...
> 
> This one goes out to Hannah, who's lovely drawings of Deaf!Jim last week were so damn cute and made me unable to think of anything else. She was also kind enough to review this fic for me, as I am not personally deaf and wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally pull some bullshit. 4 for you, Hannah, you go Hannah.

For such a smart motherfucker, Jim Kirk didn’t pay attention to shit. At least, that’s sure as hell how it seemed to Leonard about six weeks into their fast friendship, as well as their shared Federation History class. Or, well, that probably wasn’t quite correct. Jim always seemed to focus his full attention on every conversation he was having, and he certainly looked at the instructor in class, but he seemed to go off in his own little world every time he wasn’t actively speaking to someone. The amount of times Leonard had asked Jim for something, be that to please not leave the door open when he left his room or a simple request to get him a spoon from the kitchen, only to have Jim claim he didn’t hear him, was absurd. Where Jim’s brain went 90% of the day was unclear to Leonard. Maybe that was part of his whole genius schtick, maybe Jim was ignoring him intentionally to fuck with him, he didn’t know, but he was getting pretty sick of it. And yet he continued to spend most of his free time with the kid anyways. Why? He wasn’t entirely sure, but something just drew him to the other man, they just seemed to fit naturally together, Jim’s propensity to completely lose his brain at any given time notwithstanding.

“Want any popcorn?” Leonard offered his friend as he poured his own into a bowl. Only two weeks into the Academy, Jim had found out that Leonard’s knowledge of terrible “classic” movies was “severely lacking”, and they’d somehow fallen into a standing Saturday movie night where Jim’s attempted to remedy what Leonard firmly believed wasn’t a problem. Either old movies were bad, or Jim had terrible taste. Possibly both.

Jim didn’t respond to his offer of popcorn, either because he didn’t want any or because he wasn’t paying attention. It didn’t really matter to Leonard, he wasn’t getting any either way.

“Oh, popcorn!” Jim exclaimed brightly as Leonard sat down next to him on the couch, “That smells fantastic, don’t mind if I do.”

“I don’t think so, kid,” Leonard shook his head, yanking the bowl away as Jim was already digging his hand into it, “I asked you if you wanted any and you didn’t say shit. No popcorn for you.”

“Sorry, Bones, couldn’t hear ya,” Jim shrugged, unbothered by Leonard’s protests as he threw a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

“Jesus Christ, are you deaf or something? Would it kill you to pay a little attention to what’s happening around you?”

Jim snorted and just said, “Yeah.” Leonard rolled his eyes,

“I promise ya, Jim, there has never been a recorded death from paying attention when someone’s speaking to you.”

Jim laughed again, a strange cross between a snort and a giggle that Leonard found oddly charming, but he didn’t have time to process that feeling because next thing he knew Jim said, still casual as ever, “I meant yeah to the first question. I can’t hear you sometimes, ‘cause I’m deaf.”

“You’re fucking with me,” Leonard said after a moment of silence, “And it ain’t funny.”

“I’m not fucking with you, Bones, but it is funny.” Jim’s tone was still light, but there was a strange seriousness behind his brilliant blue eyes that gave Leonard pause. Jim then reached up to his ear and pulled out a small, flesh-colored device that had been sitting just inside his ear canal. “I don’t just wear these things as ear wax collectors.”

“Gross,” Leonard rolled his eyes, but mostly he was left wondering how he hadn’t noticed that the man he spent countless hours with over the past 6 weeks wore hearing aids. Jim slipped the device back in his ear with a shrug, and Leonard realized how he hadn’t noticed it before, as it was really only noticeable if you were looking for it, and he didn’t make a habit of examining his friends’ ears. “Why have you been hiding the fact that you’re fucking deaf this whole time?” Leonard asked, well aware that “this whole time” didn’t even amount to two months, though it did feel longer.

“I’m not hiding shit. You never told me you weren’t deaf,” Jim pointed out which, in Leonard’s opinion, sat on the line between a surprisingly good point and absolutely absurd. Regardless, Leonard was still kicking himself for not noticing the man he’d come to think of as his best friend was deaf.

“Oh my God,” he shook his head and buried his face in his hands, “I’ve spent this whole time thinking you were just too cool to pay attention when I asked you questions.”

Rather abruptly, Jim grabbed Leonard’s face and pulled it out of his hands,

“Man, I  _ really _ can’t understand you when you’re not looking at me.”

Oh. Of course. Jim probably supplemented whatever he was able to hear through his hearing aids by reading lips. Fucking of course. 

“I’m such an asshole,” Leonard shook his head, this time making sure his friend could see his mouth as he spoke.

“That’s not news, Bones,” Jim laughed, “I will, however, admit to maybe, possibly intentionally not bringing it up so I could see how long it took you to notice. Technically you still didn’t, but I’m sick of you muttering things as you walk away from me, as though I have even a single clue what the fuck you’re saying, man.”

Figures. Leonard kicked Jim in the shin and tried not to laugh, “And we have circled back to you being the asshole.”

“It does usually seem to come back to that. I’ll have you know, though, that I’m a total ace at lip reading. You could say I’m fluent in the language of lips.” Jim smirked in that classic, annoying Jim Kirk way. Leonard couldn’t believe he was going to be seeing that fucking face for God only knows how long.

“You continue to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Leonard grumbled and threw a piece of popcorn at his friend. He then sighed, “Jim, do you need me to…”

“I don’t need to be fucking babied,” Jim shook his head, his shoulders suddenly tense, “I’ve been dealing with this since I was a kid, I can handle it just fine.”

“I was just gonna ask if you needed me to speak louder with you,” Leonard rolled his eyes, but mentally took a note of the obvious sore spot he had inadvertently poked. Jim was fiercely independent, to the point of not wanting to accept help from anyone for anything, so this wasn’t exactly shocking. “You’re clearly more than capable of getting yourself into and out of trouble without my help.”

“Oh,” Jim flushed a bit, something Leonard hadn’t really seen him do since they’d met, “I don’t really care. I mostly just get tone and some letter sounds from voices anyways, so it wouldn’t be especially useful, but it  _ would _ be very funny to watch you go around shouting all the time.”

“You are such an asshole,” Leonard reiterated, tossing another piece of popcorn at his friend. Jim caught it in his mouth with seemingly no effort at all. Like he said, asshole.


	2. Chapter 2

Being 28, divorced, an introvert, and a self-described misanthropic asshole, Leonard had been relieved to learn that, as a graduate student, he was entitled to a private room at the Academy. That had lasted two months, at the absolute longest. Somewhere along the way, he’d picked up an informal and unofficial roommate in the form of a wicked smart, overly energetic, trouble making blond asshole. An asshole who happened to make him laugh harder and more frequently than anyone he’d ever met, who kept him away from his darker thoughts, and who was just absurdly easy to be around to the point where it felt like they’d known each other for years. 

But still, regardless of Leonard and Jim’s fast and close friendship, Leonard didn’t exactly sign up to have a second person in his dorm, and he didn’t understand how Jim of all people got off complaining about his roommate having too much sex in their dorm room. Leonard had jokingly suggested that Jim just take his hearing aids out and close his eyes, a suggestion that his friend didn’t apparently appreciate. So Jim now spent more time in Leonard’s dorm than he did his own, sleeping on his couch, napping in his bed when Leonard was away, eating his food, and letting himself in despite never having been given the code to the door.

Really, it could’ve been worse. Leonard didn’t mind having Jim in his space all the time, Jim was shockingly neat, and took his hearing aids out when he slept which meant Leonard could be as noisy as he wanted in the mornings without waking his friend. It wasn’t a terrible arrangement, all things considered, and in fact he was considering requesting a double room for the next year because if Jim was going to be crashing with him at least half the time anyways, he should at the very least have a place to sleep.

Leonard was just contemplating broaching the subject with Jim as he walked home from a long shift at the Academy clinic through cold January air when he noticed a large group of students huddled around his building. _Fuck_ , he thought _, now what_? He just hoped this didn’t have anything to do with Jim. Trouble seemed to find that kid like ants found a picnic. Granted, Jim caused a lot of that trouble himself, so Leonard’s sympathy was low, but he wasn’t in the mood to deal with large scale Jim Kirk shenanigans at the moment.

Upon joining the crowd in front of his building, it didn’t take long to learn that a water main had broken in the building and everyone had been evacuated. Leonard breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Jim’s brand of mischief didn’t typically involve large scale property damage, and he didn’t see his friend in the crowd so maybe Jim wasn’t even here. Maybe he was at the library or in his own goddamn dorm room. All the better, honestly. 

After sending Jim a comm telling him not to bother coming by, and in fact threatening to swing by Jim’s place himself if this didn’t clear up soon, Leonard then stood there and waited, glad Jim wasn’t around to make fun of him for being cold. This, however, did not last long as less than 10 minutes after he joined the crowd of his fellow students, he found Jim. Or, rather, Jim found him.

Leonard looked up at just the right moment to see Jim Kirk, soaked and pissed and looking not unlike a cat that fell in the bathtub, stomping towards him.

“Oh, God, please don’t tell me this was you.”

“What the fuck, Bones?” Jim asked, probably angrier than he’d ever seen the man. He could understand being upset at being soaking wet and stuck outside in January, but he didn’t appreciate it being taken out on him.

“What the fuck yourself? Why are you wet? You’re gonna catch your death out here.”

Jim was looking at him intently as he spoke, more so than usual, which made sense when he said,

“I left my goddamn hearing aids on the coffee table and there’s barely enough light to read your lips by. I’m going back to my dorm.”

“At least get a blanket first,” Leonard requested, knowing the emergency services that had responded to this would be carrying them. Too late he realized Jim probably didn’t understand what he’d just said, and he cursed the fact that he didn’t know a lick of sign language. In his defense, Jim didn’t use it to communicate, unless he was talking to other deaf people, so there had never been a need. It may, however, be slightly easier to communicate that way than trying to get Jim to read his lips in the low light without a hint of auditory stimulation. Eventually he settled on some make shift gestures and attempted to mime shivering and the act of wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. Jim’s blue eyes burned bright, even in the low light,

“Oh, please, now you give a shit? Ya know, when I said I don’t want you to feel like you have to take care of me, I didn’t mean ‘don’t wake up your deaf roommate when he’s asleep on your couch and they’re evacuating the building.’ Figured that much was just common fucking decency.”

It took Leonard a few moments to realize what Jim was talking about, and when he did his stomach fell. God, Jim really thought he’d been home and had left when the alarm went off, walking right past Jim and leaving him there? The very idea was absurd, and Leonard knew that he had to be crystal clear when he corrected this wildly incorrect misconception, clearer than he could be with gestures or Jim’s ability to read his lips in the low light of the late evening. After holding up a finger to Jim, requesting a moment, he dug through his bag, pulled out his PADD, and typed before handing it to Jim to read.

_What the fuck? Jim, I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy, let alone my best friend. I wasn’t in the building when they evacuated, I only just got back here, my clinic shift ran late. Of course I would’ve woken you up if I was home. God._

Jim read the message, tension shedding from his shoulders as he looked at the PADD.

“Oh,” he said finally, “Guess that makes sense. Sorry.”

Leonard nodded, took the PADD back from Jim and tilted it so the glow of the screen lit his face, and, taking care to form the words with precision, said,

“It’s okay. Blanket now?”

“Yeah, okay,” Jim agreed, falling into step with Leonard as the pair went to go find something to keep Jim from getting hypothermia. Again.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he was. Jim never should’ve been in a situation where he just happened to wake up to a building being evacuated for an emergency without his knowledge. He couldn’t believe Starfleet didn’t have a more accessible alarm system. Sure, there was a flashing light but what good did that do if someone was asleep? This hadn’t been a true emergency, it was just a little water that Jim said he ran into in the stairwell, it was fine, but the idea that the building could burn to the ground without Jim being any the wiser made Leonard want to hit something. It was the 23rd century, this never should’ve happened, and after they were allowed back in Leonard’s room - which was thankfully not damaged - and Jim had taken a warm shower and put his hearing aids back in, Leonard said as much. And suddenly Jim was looking sheepish in a way Leonard rarely saw from the man.

“Spit it out, kid, what’s going on in that head of yours?”

Jim rubbed at the back of his neck awkwardly then admitted, “Well, the Academy _does_ have an accessible alarm system. My room is programmed to have just about the brightest, most annoying strobe light of all time and there’s some weird wiring in the floor that vibrates, makes it feel like there’s a minor earthquake. It’s weird, actually. Plus, I can hear that damn alarm when my hearing aids are in. I’m just about the last person to not notice an alarm is going off. It’s not a big deal, you don’t need to go starting a petition or whatever.”

“Okay, then are you going to explain to me why my room doesn’t have those same features?”

“Bones, I don’t know if you know this, but you’re not deaf.”

Leonard rolled his eyes, “Cut the crap, kid. You’re here more often than you’re at your own place, and I ain’t always home when you’re here, which today proved. Whatever form I gotta fill out, just point me in the right direction, I want that shit done before you go to sleep here alone again. And you better not give me any shit about being melodramatic, if this had been a fire you could’ve _died_.”

Suddenly, Jim was looking a bit sheepish again, “It’s, uh, it’s just something you have to click in your PADD. You could do it now, if you wanted.”

Leonard stared at Jim for several long moments then, without breaking eye contact, grabbed his PADD from the counter, went into the program that handled his dorm settings, found the accessibility section, and lo and behold there was a whole list of toggles for settings that would make the technology in Academy dorm rooms more accessible to students with various disabilities and impairments.

“It’s just a fucking button!” Leonard exclaimed, practically yelling. This was absurd. The difference between Jim being safe in his dorm room and being unaware of an emergency was a fucking button that took him 2 seconds to enable, one that he would’ve enabled the day he found out Jim was deaf if only Jim had even slightly implied that it was an option.

“Man, are you yelling at me right now? Don’t waste your breath, it all sounds like the same shit to me anyways.” Jim rolled his eyes.

“Maybe yelling is fucking cathartic. Now, Jim, I want you to explain to me why making my room safe for you was as easy as tapping a damn button on my PADD and I’m just now hearing about it. And don’t you even try to tell me you were nervous about asking me to do it. You have less respect for personal property than anyone I’ve ever met, you’re in my PADD _all the damn time_ , you could’ve flipped the setting on yourself and I never would’ve known. No, this was Jim Kirk recklessness, plain and simple, and…” Leonard cut himself off as he noticed Jim’s eyes weren’t even close to focused on his mouth. Bastard. He gripped his friend by the shoulder to get his attention back, “You look at me when I’m talking to you, dammit.”

“God, Bones, don’t get your panties in a twist. What’s it to you, anyways?”

“What’s it to me? You’re my best damn friend, that’s what it is to me. For some goddamn reason I actually care about you, would you get that through your thick skull?”

"Look,” Jim pulled his fingers through his hair, “If this is about earlier, I’m sorry, okay? You don’t know what it feels like to wake up, seeing that damn alarm flashing, and realizing the whole building has been evacuated for god knows what and god knows how long and have _no idea_ what’s waiting for you in the hallway. I overreacted…” 

“You were worried, I get it,” Leonard forced himself to take a deep breath and place his hands on his friend’s forearms, hoping against hope that this would help him communicate what he was trying to say, “I ain’t mad at you for being freaked out, or for thinking I abandoned you. I know that must’ve been scary, I can hardly blame you. For that. For not telling me about the accessible alarm system, on the other hand…”

“I just forgot, okay?” Jim said, shaking his head, “At first it felt silly ‘cause I was only here when you were too but now I practically live here and it didn’t even cross my mind. I’ll own to doing a bunch of stupid, reckless shit, but this wasn’t that. Not all of us operate on your constant high levels of anxiety. Believe it or not, most people don’t think that much about alarm systems in their daily lives.”

Jim was smiling at the end, though, lighter and happier and teasing. It was infectious, and damn impossible to stay mad at the kid.

“Okay,” Leonard nodded, “Now’s your time to tell me about anything else I should do around here that you’ve been putting off or forgetting about.”

“It’s nothing, honestly. Tonight’s been weird, do you want a beer?”

“They’re my damn beers. But yes.”

“Ya know,” Jim said in that smug tone of voice of his, “I’d like to point out that I referred to you as my roommate earlier and you never corrected me.”

Leonard waited to respond until Jim had turned around. That habit had taken a bit to get into, but by now it was second nature. This time, he waited until they were side by side on the couch, beers in their hand, to offer,

“You wanna move in next year?”

“What?” Jim asked, obviously slightly shocked by the suddenness of the offer. It had probably seemed like it came out of nowhere, but Leonard figured there was no time like the present.

“Do you want to move in next year?” he repeated, taking care to form his words more carefully, “Officially be my roommate.”

“No, Bones, I got you, I just didn’t see it coming is all. You’ve got a single and you wanna give that up?”

“I don’t have a single, I have a roommate that sleeps on my couch at least 4 days a week. I don’t feel like you’re gonna stop anytime soon, so you might as well have your own bed. Plus, well, the company could be worse.”

“Yeah, I’m the one who’s getting the raw end of this deal, when you think about it. You’re like a bear in the morning, Bones. Or, I assume you are. Honestly I don’t turn my hearing aids on around you until you’ve had your first cup of coffee, the grumpiness just rolls off you in waves and I want no part in that.”

“Oh, you little asshole,” Leonard couldn’t help but laugh at that, pulling Jim into a loose headlock as his friend laughed then managed to escape by pinching a ticklish spot on Leonard’s side. In some form of cruel revenge, Jim then shoved his foot in Leonard’s face. Leonard threw a pillow at him.

“That’s a yes, by the way,” Jim said after he finally finished laughing, though he still wore a brilliant smile on his face, “I will do you the honor of being my roommate the next two years.”

“Two years? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Jim,” Leonard teased, all the while knowing there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be rid of Jim after next year. And, when he thought about it, that really was only a good thing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have to give Anna a shoutout for this scenario, "me-time" Jim was her baby as the discord discussed Hannah's deaf!Jim last week.

Leonard was pretty sure that there was no point in having a roommate if said roommate couldn’t even let you in the building when you were locked out. Supposedly, that was half the point. And yet when he’d arrived back to his dorm late one night after a long shift at the hospital, grumpy and cold from having trudged through the rain from the shuttle stop, only to find out that his communicator was failing to let him in the building as it should, Jim was suddenly nowhere to be found. Granted, it was possible Jim wasn’t home, but it was nearly midnight on a Wednesday and Jim had a big paper due Friday and last he heard from his friend he was planning on staying in and working on that all night. Maybe Jim had stepped out for a quick, ill timed break. Maybe he’d gone to sleep early and the flashing light of his comm notification hadn’t woken him up. And maybe Leonard would be standing in the rain for the rest of his life.

It being a Wednesday night right before midterms, there weren’t a lot of people around. In fact, there wasn’t anyone around. Campus was desolate, with nearly every student hard at work in the libraries or their rooms, or possibly asleep already. Leonard hadn’t seen another person since he’d left the shuttle stop. And, to make matters worse, the fact that he didn’t know any of his neighbors, a fact that he usually wore with pride, was coming back to bite him in the ass. If this had been Jim, locked outside because his damn communicator wouldn’t open the door because technology was out to get him, he could’ve asked any number of people to let him in. But as for Leonard he was stuck waiting for either Jim to get his comm messages or for someone else to finally enter or leave their building.

In total, Leonard waited outside in the rain for nearly half an hour before some study group in their building let out and the exiting cadets let him in the building. By that time he was soaked right down to his bones, no pun intended, in a terrible mood, and craving nothing more than a hot shower, some chamomile tea, and going the hell to bed. He had luckily been rescued before he could decide if he was desperate enough to request to crash with any of his friends. He did actually have friends other than Jim, contrary to what Jim always teased him about, but the relationships weren’t even close to the same, and the only person he’d ask to crash with lived with him full time now, and hadn’t answered his goddamn communicator.

Foregoing the turbo lift, Leonard trudged up the stairs to the 3rd floor room he and Jim had shared since the end of their first year. He was dripping all over the floor and he didn’t even care, the only thoughts in his head were of being dry and warm.

Just when he thought he couldn’t get anymore annoyed by this night, he opened the door to his room - which actually worked, thank God - and quickly spotted Jim Kirk clad in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around his head, reclining on a chair, his feet propped up on his desk, facing away from the door.

“Goddammit, Jim, I’ve been standing in the rain for half an hour, why didn’t you check your damn…” Leonard mumbled, mostly to himself as he knew Jim wouldn’t be able to get much if anything from him talking across the room. He cut himself off, though, when he approached his friend and quickly discovered the reason why he’d been ignored for the past half an hour. Jim had some sort of purple mud mask smeared across his face, his hearing aids sat on the desk, and he had goddamn cucumbers on his eyes. “Oh, fuck you,” Leonard grumbled, grabbed Jim’s PADD from his bed, and tossed it at his friend. The device struck his arm and fell to the floor as Jim just about jumped out of his skin. One of the cucumbers fell off his eye and the other one slid down and got stuck on the mud on his cheek.

“What the fuck?” Jim asked, scrambling to his feet so quickly he nearly tripped over the plush slippers he was wearing. He blinked twice, wiped cucumber juice from his eyelids, and stared at Leonard, finally putting two and two together. “What the fuck, man, don’t sneak up on me like that! Good thing I’m not as old as you, you probably would’ve had a heart attack. Jesus Christ. Wait, why are you wet?”

“You are the worst thing in my life,” Leonard complained as Jim was putting his hearing aids in. Jim hadn’t been watching him at the time, so he doubted his friend knew what he said, but it felt good to say anyways. There also wasn’t a shred of truth in it, but they both knew that.

“Oh, it’s raining,” Jim observed, peering out the window for the first time in what must have been a while. He then looked back at Leonard and laughed, “Bones, you look like a drowned cat. You look grumpier than usual. Oh my God, you should see your face right now.”

“Well, Jim, you see my communicator decided that it didn’t want to open the door to my building for me, because all this damn technology is out to get me,” Leonard spoke carefully to make sure Jim followed him the whole time. “This was half an hour ago. I am, as you so keenly observed, wet and angry because I was forced to stand in the rain for half an hour until someone else left because my roommate was too busy turning our dorm into a damn spa to answer my comms!”

By the time he finished, Jim was laughing so hard, nearly doubled over with his eyes all scrunched up, that Leonard doubted he’d even understood the end of what he’d been saying. Jim’s laughter was far more contagious than any disease Leonard had ever encountered, so even though he was wet and cold and trying very hard to be annoyed at his roommate, he couldn’t keep himself from cracking a smile and laughing a bit too.

“You laughed, I’m off the hook!” Jim proclaimed proudly when he was finally finished practically giggling like a child. Leonard rolled his eyes, hoping Jim didn’t notice just how much affection was behind the gesture. “Sorry I missed you comm, however as you can see it interrupted my me-time.”

“Your what?” Leonard deadpanned.

“My me-time! Ya know, self care and all that. It’s important,” Jim nodded, attempting to imitate seriousness despite the glimmer of humor in his brilliant blue eyes.

“Are you, Mr. Breaks His Wrist and Doesn’t Mention It, Mr. Bar Fights, Mr. ‘Will Cocaine Make Help Me Study for Longer?’ telling me about  _ self care _ ? Jim Kirk, you’ve never eaten a salad in your life. Those cucumbers are probably the first vegetable you’ve touched all semester!”

“Firstly, I would like to point out that asking if I should do cocaine and actually  _ doing _ it are two separate things entirely. Secondly, don’t knock me-time ‘till you’ve tried it, Bones. It really is quite relaxing. You don’t really get the full effect until you turn your ears off, but I guess you can make do,” Jim shrugged. He was downright grinning now, and Leonard couldn’t help but match the expression despite being wet, cold, and theoretically miserable. 

“You’re a pain in my ass. Take that shit off your face, you’re probably allergic to it. I’m gonna go take a shower.”

“Oh, what, me in my bathrobe has gotten you so hot and bothered you need a cold shower, Bones?” Jim teased, untying his robe to reveal more of his chest. Jim was good looking, this was just an objective fact, and Leonard thought himself immune to his friend’s charms so he figured there was no harm in looking for just a moment before rolling his eyes,

“A hot shower, you ingrate. Don’t go into anaphylaxis while I’m in there.”

“No promises,” Jim grinned and flopped back on his bed. Leonard rolled his eyes again. God, this fucking kid. Can’t live with him, can’t live without him.


	4. Chapter 4

Going out with Jim was always a crap shoot. There was no real way of telling when they left their dorm just how the night would go. Over a year and a half of friendship had led to Leonard being pretty good at discerning the many moods of one James T Kirk and how said moods would likely impact the quality of their evening out, but Jim was unpredictable to his core and there was only so far Leonard’s guessing could get him. There were, however, some generalities. Jim in a bad mood typically led to Leonard being forced to drunk babysit, pulling Jim away from fights, and dragging his sloppy drunk friend home. Jim looking to celebrate typically either led to them both getting sloppy drunk and dragging each other home _or_ them both getting sloppy drunk and Jim going home with someone while Leonard dragged himself home alone. Tonight, though, was neither a celebration night nor a drinking to forget night. Tonight, Jim was just in an inexplicably stellar mood, all wide smiles and bright eyes and oh so beautiful, and had suggested they go out for a few drinks. Leonard had readily agreed and they’d gone out to their favorite bar just off campus, found a couple seats at the bar, and each ordered a beer. Leonard was then treated to his absolute favorite guilty pleasure: Jim’s full attention.

Thing was, Jim was quite easily distracted, especially in a place like this. He often came to bars hoping to at the very least flirt, if not find someone to bring home for the night, and while he never made Leonard feel ignored per say - or, well, not typically - it was just a simple fact that there were moments where Jim belonged to the whole room. And this was not one of them. Jim drank his beer slowly, body turned in towards Leonard so they could be face to face while sitting side to side, and just chatted happily. It was like they were the only two people in the room with the way Jim’s eyes didn’t once leave his face, effortlessly reading his lips and expressions as they talked. There wasn’t a feeling in the world like this, and Leonard never felt more special than with the full weight of Jim’s gaze on him all night. He wished he could bottle this feeling, take it with him forever. Jim would rather spend all evening by his side, talking to him, than go find some hot young thing to grind up against on the dance floor. It shouldn’t have been so flattering, because Leonard always claimed he had a natural immunity to Jim Kirk charm. This he maintained as true, however if he was being honest with himself he really only had immunity to the intentional Jim Kirk charm. Genuine and unintentional Jim Kirk charm? Now that was another story entirely. Not that Leonard would ever tell his friend that under any circumstances. The last thing Jim needed to know was how easily he could play Leonard like a fiddle without even trying.

“What’s gotten you in such a good mood today, anyways?” Leonard finally asked. He’d been wondering all evening, but he also knew that sometimes if you pressed too much into a Jim Kirk good mood it would disappear, and he never wanted to risk that.

“Nothing, just a good day is all,” Jim shrugged, “Good day, great company, can’t complain.”

Leonard raised his beer bottle in agreement, and Jim knocked his own bottle against it and they both took a drink. Jim smiled, warm and genuine and a thousand kilometers away from the smirk he usually wore in public, and the two held a few beats of intensely comfortable silence together before Jim suddenly turned around and started scanning the crowd. Leonard attempted to ignore the way his stomach fell at the sight of his friend perusing the bar for someone.

“Anyone catch your eye?” Leonard asked, because he was trying to be a good sport and there really was no reason to care anyways. Granted, he did care, but had no good reason to.

Jim spun around again on his stool and raised his eyebrows. Obviously Jim had heard him say something, but had no idea what. Rookie mistake, really. He’d learned quickly not to talk to Jim when his friend wasn’t looking at him, but he still slipped up every once and awhile. Figuring his question didn’t bear repeating, he shook his head and took another pull of his beer.

“You know I hate it when you do that,” Jim reminded him, crossing his arms over his chest. This was true, few things frustrated Jim more than someone saying something to him that he didn’t hear and then refusing to repeat it. On more than one occasion Jim had threatened bodily harm on the next person who said the word “nevermind” to him.

“Just wonderin’ if you had spotted the person you were gonna go home with tonight is all.”

“Nah,” Jim shook his head, smile still playing at his lips, “I’ll probably just go home with my best friend. He’s usually more fun anyways, despite his frequent best efforts to the contrary.”

Leonard couldn’t help but smile at that in the way that seemingly only Jim could make him do. But before he had time to say anything back, Jim glanced over his shoulder briefly then back at Leonard,

“Say, Bones, what’re those people arguing about back there?”

“Nope,” Leonard shook his head, “Not happening. We’re having a perfectly nice night, if I tell you then you’ll get involved and my night will be ruined.”

In truth, Leonard hadn’t been following the argument happening between a handful of men about Jim’s age standing behind them, but Jim wasn’t great at avoiding fights, no matter what they were about. 

“I was just curious,” Jim said, beautiful blue eyes wide in the picture of false innocence. Leonard rolled his eyes, but regardless of Jim’s intentions Leonard’s night didn’t stay peaceful for long. One of the men arguing behind them shoved the other, who went careening into Jim’s back, and Jim was on his feet in a second, fast enough that when Leonard reached for his shoulders to hold him back all he grabbed was air. It all devolved far too fast for Leonard to even go for his usual technique of grabbing Jim by the shoulders and just bodily removing his friend from the bar altogether. There was shouting, then punching, and Leonard still was trying to figure out what the fight was even about to begin with when there was a tell-tale whistle of a law enforcement officer. Jim often adjusted his hearing aids to block out background noise when they went to places like this, so he didn’t hear the officer, though the rest of the group - and it really was more of a melee than it was a fight with two defined “sides” - did and they were all scrambling for the exits before Jim even knew what was going on. It was loud enough in the bar that Jim didn’t even hear Leonard shout his name as a warning, and in fact didn’t notice the officer until the man put his hands on Jim’s shoulders, leading Jim to spin around and face the officer with wide eyes. The officer shook his head,

“Unfortunately for you, kid, you were the only one too slow or too stupid to run away. It isn’t worth my time to run after them. You, on the other hand...you do know bar fights are illegal, right?”

There was a confusion on Jim’s features that didn’t really make any sense given the amount of times he’d been in this situation. Leonard stood up to join his friend in front of the officer, briefly worried that the fight had been more violent than it had appeared and Jim had hit his head or something. But concern was replaced with incredulous exasperation and just a hint of amusement when Jim just looked at the officer in his best doe-eyed expression, tapped on his ears, and shook his head.

“What, can’t hear me?” the officer said, then spoke louder and slower, “I am going to take you into custody.”

Jim shot that same confused look at the officer, then his eyes briefly darted in Leonard’s direction. Shit. He was not getting involved in this little plan of Jim’s. He was not. He was…

“He’s deaf, sir. He can’t hear you no matter how clearly you speak.”

The officer turned beet red and Jim was trying very hard to hide his self-satisfaction with this whole scenario. As for Leonard, he was disappointed in himself for getting involved at all. The officer stared at Jim for a beat, then turned towards Leonard,

“Are you with him?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“So you know sign language.”

“Uh, not really,” Leonard answered, before realizing maybe he shouldn’t have admitted to that. Jim had taught him a few signs just for fun, mostly swears, but it wasn’t how Jim preferred to communicate so he never saw a point in trying to find time to really learn. But he had already told the officer he was with Jim, and how was he ever going to believe that if they supposedly couldn’t even communicate?

“How do you talk to each other? Can you tell him that he’s in trouble?” the officer requested, looking more and more frazzled by the second. As for Jim, he was still playing confused, looking between Leonard and the officer pretending he couldn’t understand a goddamn word they were saying, despite being able to read lips with decent accuracy even when he was too drunk to speak coherently. There was a spark of amusement, though, behind Jim’s eyes, and Leonard knew his friend understood every word they were saying. Which made him all the more hesitant to give literally the only explanation he could possibly think of to the officer’s question. Jim was never going to let him live this down, he should just tell the officer Jim can speak and read lips perfectly fine and is just trying to get out of something. But instead he cleared his throat and said,

“Our relationship is purely physical.”

To Jim’s credit, he didn’t react, he kept on looking just as confused and innocent as he had been since the start of all this. The officer, on the other hand, looked as deeply awkward about the admission as Leonard felt. He looked between the two men then sighed, grabbed a cocktail napkin off a table and pulled a pen from his pocket. He wrote something down and handed it to Jim. Leonard read over his friend’s shoulder, and saw that the note said he was going to be let off with a warning, but to stay out of trouble from now on. Jim grinned as he read it, nodded eagerly, patted the officer on the shoulder, then grabbed Leonard’s wrist and pulled him out of the bar.

Jim didn’t say a word until they’d rounded the corner and he’d checked behind them several times to ensure the officer hadn’t followed them, and when he finally did he burst out laughing,

“‘Our relationship is purely physical’, _Bones_!”

“What the fuck was I supposed to say?” Leonard asked, trying to find the part of him that was mad at Jim for this whole situation.

“You’re fucking brilliant, man. _Brilliant_ ,” Jim was still laughing happily, “God, I love ya Bones, that was amazing!”

“Oh, shove it, will ya? I wish you couldn’t speak,” Leonard rolled his eyes. Jim let loose another giggle then sighed happily,

“Ah, what a classic. That works every time.”

“Oh really?” Leonard quirked an eyebrow at his friend, “So the half dozen misdemeanors on your record are…”

“Cleared and expunged, provided I don’t get in trouble at the Academy,” Jim said proudly. “Those were all back home, all the local cops knew me too well for that to work. But let me tell you, Bones, nobody wants to book a deaf guy they can’t even communicate with. Nearly fool proof.”

“Okay, you gonna tell me what the hell that was about, then?” Leonard asked, rounding on his friend and matching Jim’s pace but walking backwards in front of him so he could easily see his lips. The more he thought about Jim jumping into that fight, the angrier he got. So much of Jim’s post graduate placement depended on getting his former record expunged, Leonard had thought he’d learned long ago that pointless bar fights weren’t a risk worth taking. “What the hell were you thinking, Jim? There wasn’t a single goddamn reason for you to get involved in that fight. You sure do talk a lot about being captain someday for you to be getting into fights that could make that difficult or impossible _for no fucking reason_ . Not to even mention the blatant risk to your safety every single time you involve yourself in one of those things! Jim, you are single handedly going to raise my blood pressure so high I’m going to have a heart attack before I’m 35! I fucking care about you, and…” 

“You’re gonna walk off a curb,” Jim warned him. Leonard stopped short and Jim nearly ran into him, because as it turns out Jim was looking somewhere to the right of his face, all while fiddling with his ear. Oh, fuck him.

“Did you just turn your fucking hearing aids off?” Leonard asked incredulously, suddenly realizing that between that and the fact that Jim was very much so not looking at his face, his friend probably hadn’t gotten a word of his rather ranty lecture.

“No comment. Are you done?” Jim asked, raising his hands to his ears to turn them on again.

“You’re incorrigible, kid. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Oh, come on Bones. There’s a lot of downsides to being deaf, I take my wins where I can. Besides, I kinda got the whole thing in the first two sentences. You rant a lot, but it’s mostly just saying the same thing in different ways. I didn’t miss anything.”

“How would you know?” Leonard challenged and Jim smiled and shrugged, 

“I know you, Bones. I don’t know what you want from me, though.”

“I want you to listen to me when I’m talking to you, for one thing. Do you do this often?”

“That’s for me to know, and you to find out,” Jim winked and Leonard rolled his eyes. “If I point out that it was more of a tussle than a fight, that won’t actually help, will it?”

“Jim…”

“I don’t even know what that officer was doing there. Are there not bigger problems in San Francisco on a Friday night than some guys shoving each other in a bar?”

“Jim…”

“I dunno, Bones, sometimes I just get an itch for it. Figured those guys were so drunk and stupid that I could get some of that energy out without breaking my nose or something. Really, you should be proud of me.”

“I’m not.”

“You really are impossible to please,” Jim shook his head with a small smile, “You want cake? That late night bakery is around here and I’m hungry.”

“You’re not going to get in a fight there, are you?” Leonard asked and Jim laughed,

“I make no promises.”


	5. Chapter 5

It only took two weeks into Jim’s practicum for Leonard to realize he was in love with his best friend, and immediately upon that realization he decided he should’ve figured it out at least a year earlier than he did. Thing was, in addition to living in Leonard’s dorm room, Jim also figuratively lived in his pocket. They’d been inseparable since day one, and had never spent more than a week apart before, and even then it had only happened twice: once the previous summer for Jim’s survival training, and once the previous winter break when Leonard went to visit family in Georgia. This time, though, they would be apart for three entire months. Leonard knew it would be hard sitting around in San Francisco while Jim was light years away and only occasionally in range for consistent subspace messages. He knew it’d be hard, even though he was throwing himself into work that summer and wouldn’t exactly have tons of free time to sit around missing his best friend. He knew it’d be hard, but he realized on day 9 that it was going to be about a million times harder than he thought it’d be. And it was day 14 when he fully realized just why that was.

It was kind of odd, the way Leonard realized it. The past two weeks had dragged, despite his summer course work he was taking so he could graduate in 3 years with Jim and all the hours at the Academy clinic and SFM he was putting in. His work kept him away from their dorm for most of his waking hours, but even still everything seemed to move so much slower without Jim to run after or chat with or just  _ be _ with. He’d love to say he was handling the distance like a normal fucking human being, but the list on his PADD of things to ask and tell Jim the next time they got to talk and the way he had to work to avoid neurotically checking the status of Jim’s ship and the way he stupidly, shamefully, and completely weirdly had slept in Jim’s bed maybe once or twice said otherwise. It was codependent and probably a little bit unhealthy and a lot bit neurotic, but it was how it was. Oddly, it wasn’t the time that he crawled into Jim’s bed when he’d been unable to sleep at 2 am under the guise of seeking out cool sheets that made Leonard realize that maybe his feelings for Jim weren’t just close friendship. No, that had come from a more innocuous moment, because nothing in their relationship had ever made sense.

Leonard did most of his studying in the library now, because his apartment was too quiet without Jim, and when a message popped up on his PADD from Jim he stopped everything he was doing and poured over every word his best friend had written him. This was only their second communication since Jim had left, because being a cadet put him at the bottom of the ladder as far as subspace privileges went. Leonard couldn’t help the smile on his face as he read Jim’s message, which was fairly brief since he was apparently quite busy. Jim was obviously having a hell of a time up there, and as much as he worried he was happy his friend was enjoying the work so much. Leonard abandoned his studying and set to composing a return message to Jim right away, sent it off, then reclined back in his chair with a smile on his face, feeling happier than he had since Jim’s last message a little over a week ago. And that was what did it. The inescapable knowledge of how much  _ happier _ he was with Jim, how even just reading a message from his friend made his entire day, how thrilled he was that Jim was having fun despite the mission taking him so far away, all added up to suddenly smack Leonard in the face.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, “I’m in love with Jim Kirk.”

Of course Leonard was in love with Jim. Pretty much everything about the way he’d acted towards and thought about the kid in the past year, at least, pointed at that as the only feasible explanation. The realization freaked him out just a little, but mostly it just felt right. Whether or not he was actually going to do anything about this revelation was still undecided, but for right now it didn’t matter. Jim was countless light years away, and if there was ever a conversation that absolutely had to happen in person, it was this one. If it was going to even happen at all. From the moment he realized his feelings, Leonard knew he wanted all of Jim in a way his friend had never given himself to anyone before, at least not that he knew of. That is, if Jim even felt the same way, which was another thing he wasn’t sure on. Ugh, Leonard had promised himself he wasn’t going to spend all his time thinking about what would happen if he told Jim about his feelings, or if he even wanted to. Really, that was a worry best saved until fall. Not that he’d ever been good about forcing himself to stop worrying about pointless things.

Annoyingly, Leonard did not get used to Jim being gone as time went on. He maybe settled into it a bit, but he still felt a distinct absence, like a part of him had disappeared without warning. It was dramatic, and made him feel like a lovesick fool, but maybe that’s what he was now. Their communications were still few and far between, averaging about once a week, but as Jim got further out they often came in batches, usually two every other week, which was less preferable. And so far, all their communications had been in writing, and it seemed like that was going to be how it stayed until about a month in when Jim casually mentioned that he did in fact have access to a subspace video feed, but only when the ship could spare the bandwidth and nobody else was using it, which almost exclusively happened in the middle of the night ship’s time, which also happened to be San Francisco time. For some reason, Jim had mistakenly and incorrectly assumed that Leonard would not want to get up in the middle of the night at a moment’s notice to talk to him. This was probably due to the fact that Leonard had told Jim on several occasions not to wake him up in the middle of the night when he came home drunk and just wanted to hang out. But this was different. He hadn’t communicated with his friend in real time in over a month, he’d make the sacrifice willingly and told Jim as much. So when Leonard was awoken at 3:30 am one day about halfway through Jim’s time in space by an incoming call, he wasn’t annoyed but instead was relieved as he grabbed his PADD, turned on the lights, and connected the call while still lying in bed.

“Bones!” Jim greeted him excitedly, his picture loading on Leonard’s PADD. Leonard took a moment to really take in the sight of his friend and found him as beautiful as ever, even through the somewhat grainy video. Jim was paler than he thought he’d ever seen him, but appeared healthy at first glance. Healthy, and completely and utterly thrilled. Leonard felt something pull tight in his chest, but tried to ignore it in favor of smiling back at his friend.

“Hey, Jim. Good to see ya again.”

Jim just knit his brows together, cursed, then started fidgeting with something off screen.

“Everything okay over there, kid?” Leonard asked, slightly concerned with Jim’s sudden change in mood.

“This video quality is complete shit,” Jim complained, “They really don’t let us cadets have anything. I’m lucky to get instantaneous transmission at all.”

“It’s fine, Jim,” Leonard assured him. Sure, the video quality was even worse than those old movies Jim sometimes made him watch, and the audio made it sound like his friend was speaking into a pillow, but it was still far and away better than nothing. Jim groaned and pressed his head against a bulkhead behind him,

“You’re so grainy I can barely read your lips, and I’m not getting  _ shit _ from audio, it’s all so choppy. Fuck this, this is worse than nothing.”   


“Can’t you turn on text captions?” Leonard asked. Jim often used them on video calls regardless of the call quality. He said reading lips over video was a bit tricker. Leonard thought he heard Jim hit something,

“This isn’t working, Bones, I’m sorry.”

Not wanting the call to be over as quickly as it started, he held one finger up to the camera then grabbed the old fashioned paper notebook Jim kept on his desk, as well as a pen, and wrote his previous question on a blank page and held it to the camera of his PADD.

“Your audio quality is so shitty the captioning doesn’t know what to do with it. It tried to tell me your last question was about tit cartoons, which let me tell you would be fun, but surprising.”

Leonard flipped over another page in the notebook and wrote “I was not talking about tit cartoons, you fucking ingrate. I’m not 12.”

Jim stared at the paper for a long moment, then said,

“Man, I can barely read that, your handwriting is so shitty and the video is making everything blurry. This really isn’t fucking working for me.”

Leonard considered attempting to use his limited knowledge of sign language, but even if he knew signs other than swears and dirty words, he doubted Jim would be able to see his hands well enough to tell what he was saying.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, his stomach sinking at the inevitability of this call ending so soon. This wasn’t even close to what he’d been looking forward to for the past 3 weeks.

“Now that one I got,” Jim laughed humorlessly, “Fuck this, it’s not your fault. I’ll poke around at some things, maybe we can try again later. ‘Till next time, Bones?”

Leonard nodded, trying not to seem too upset or disappointed. Jim was clearly frustrated at the terrible subspace connections interrupting his ability to communicate, and Leonard didn’t want to make it any worse. This was a moment where they’d both be better off if he kept his own frustration to himself. So instead he nodded, attempted his best approximation of a smile given his current mood, and waved goodbye to his best friend, a sinking feeling in his stomach that he wouldn’t see him again for the rest of the 5 weeks left in Jim’s practicum.

“You’re not fooling anyone with whatever the hell you’re doing with your face right now, Bones. Don’t break my shit. Kirk out.”

And then, before he had the chance to even think about if he could say something back, the screen went black.

“Stupid fucking space,” Leonard cursed, throwing Jim’s notebook hard across the room. It was still the middle of the night, and he theoretically had another few hours to sleep, but by this time he was awake and far too annoyed and disappointed to get any real rest, so instead he dragged himself out of bed, got dressed, and went to go run his frustrations out. It wouldn’t bring the video feed back and it wouldn’t make Jim get home faster, but at least it would distract him from his thoughts. Hopefully.


	6. Chapter 6

Leonard was going to tell him. He was going to tell Jim that he was in love with him. It was a risk, he knew that. Jim was always a flight risk, although significantly less so now than he had been when they first met, but despite this Leonard trusted his best friend. Sure, he may end up regretting it, there was a significant possibility that nothing would come of it, but the more he thought about it the more he realized the reward was worth the risk. He trusted Jim more than he’d trusted anyone before, and knew that even if Jim freaked out a bit in the short term, something like this wasn’t going to ruin their friendship. And, frankly, he was going crazy keeping it to himself. He never had been all that good at keeping secrets, and he’d gotten so used to having this completely open relationship with Jim that keeping something this big from his best friend was making him crazy. So, shortly after the two men reunited with a probably too long hug at the shuttle port after Jim’s summer practicum, Leonard decided he was going to tell Jim how he felt. If only he could figure out how to do it.

Try as he might, Leonard couldn’t seem to come up with a good way to go about telling his best friend about his feelings. He thought about it all the time, even caught himself practicing particularly promising confessions in front of the mirror like a child, only to realize in the end that those weren’t right either. By midway through the fall semester of their third year, he decided to try a different method of practice. After all, the fact that Leonard was still incredibly in love with Jim despite Jim’s recent fixation on and complete inability to shut up about the damn Kobayashi Maru proved that whatever this was, it had staying power. If listening to Jim rant incessantly about some stupid test did nothing to Leonard’s feelings, he wasn’t sure anything could. So, he took to trying different phrasings of the near inevitable confession of feelings out when Jim was actually around. Just, obviously, not when Jim could hear him.

He knew it was probably in bad form to take advantage of the fact that if he was facing away from Jim, and across the room, then his friend wouldn’t have a clue what he was saying, but he was building to something here, and this was helping. Maybe. In truth, he was no closer to figuring out how to go about this than when he’d started, and Jim was convinced he’d developed an odd habit of talking to himself a lot, but he was at least more comfortable saying the words out loud. And if Jim thought he’d lost it, then so be it.

“Jim, I need to talk to you about something. And I want it to be clear I ain’t expecting anything from you...shit, no that’s not right,” Leonard said to himself as he made dinner in the little kitchen of the little apartment that was almost more like a dorm it was so small. Jim sat on the counter, being exactly zero help while he had his face buried so deep in a PADD Leonard thought maybe he wouldn’t even notice if he was slapped across the face. It was as good of a time to practice as any.

“Jim, I know how you feel about relationships…” he shook his head. He’d tried that one out before, and kept coming to the conclusion that it sounded too judgmental. Besides, it was best not to jump to conclusions.

“Talking to yourself again, Bones?” Jim asked, so out of nowhere that it made Leonard jump. He apparently wasn’t as focused on whatever he was reading as Leonard thought he had been. “Ya know, I’ve heard that as long as the voices in your head don’t talk back, you’re not crazy.”

“How reassuring, thanks,” Leonard said dryly, “Can’t a man talk to himself in peace?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Jim grinned then looked back down at his PADD, “Carry on with your crazy ramblings.”

Leonard smiled as he turned back away from Jim, and muttered,

“God, Jim, you make me so happy, I never thought I’d love like this.”

That was maybe a bit better. More natural. Lately he was leaning towards something a bit more organic and…

“Go on,” Jim said abruptly, and Leonard spun around on his heels to face his friend, who was grinning at him and swinging his legs off the side of the counter. Leonard raised an eyebrow,

“What the hell are you talkin’ about, kid?”

“Bones, the replicator is reflective,” Jim said casually, and Leonard froze. Well and truly froze. If he was holding something, he probably would’ve dropped it. Fuck.  _ Fuck _ . He’d been standing in front of the replicator, which had an exterior so shiny it was nearly a mirror, and had confessed his love to Jim. Who was sitting right behind him. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Suddenly, there was no longer any time to decide how he wanted to play this. Jim was looking at him expectantly and fucking  _ grinning _ and months of trying to figure out the perfect way to say it had apparently all amounted to this. Whatever  _ this _ was.

“Weren’t you supposed to be reading something?” Leonard asked, for lack of anything else to say. Maybe he could buy himself some time.

Jim’s grin turned into a smirk, but slightly less wolfish and self-satisfied than the one he displayed in public. Oh, he thought he was hot shit, no doubt about it, but there was something akin to joy in those bright blue eyes, and just a touch of shyness in his smile. If he weren’t so busy worrying about what the hell he was going to say next, that look may have wrecked Leonard to his very core. It still did, a little. 

Smirk still in place, Jim hopped down from the counter.

“I’ve been curious what the hell you’ve been saying to yourself the past couple weeks,” Jim admitted, taking a step towards Leonard, who still stood at the opposite end of the tiny kitchen, barely three paces away from his friend. “So I figured I’d try to figure it out myself.” Another step. “Imagine my surprise when I find out you’ve told everything in the house that you love me.” Another step, and Jim was suddenly very much in Leonard’s space. As if that somehow wasn’t enough for him, Jim leaned in, resting his hands on the cabinet on either side of Leonard’s face, then looked up, blue eyes wide as he finished, “Except me.”

The two men were so close their noses were touching, and their breaths intermingled. Leonard swallowed hard. This wasn’t at all how it was supposed to go, but with Jim so close he found he had a hard time caring.

“Jim,” he said, surprised by how husky his own voice sounded.

“Are you going to deny it, Bones?” Jim challenged, but Leonard knew him well enough to see through the bravado on his features. There was some part of Jim that worried that he’d massively overplayed his hand, that he’d interpreted what Leonard had said wildly incorrectly. And that just couldn’t do, could it? So before he could think his way out of it, Leonard closed the remaining centimeters between them and pressed his lips to Jim’s.

Kissing Jim was nothing like how he’d imagined, but somehow even better than he thought. All the cocky confidence somehow flew out the window as Jim sunk into Leonard’s lips, and though Jim’s lips were soft and his mouth hot and sweet, just as he always imagined, Leonard never would’ve guessed that self-proclaimed Academy playboy Jim Kirk kissed like  _ this _ . It was foolish, really, because he probably could’ve imagined his best friend Jim kissing like this, all sweet and soft and so full of joy and wonder that Leonard knew, absolutely  _ knew _ in that moment that Jim loved him back. Suddenly, he was struck with the need to make sure Jim knew just how confident and sure Leonard was of his feelings, so he pulled back, laughing a little at the small and startled whine that Jim made when their lips separated.

He pulled back just enough for Jim to be able to see his lips as he spoke,

“Jim, I love you.”

“I know,” Jim smiled, then his face fell and he scrunched up his brows, “Shit. I mean I love you too. Fuck.”

Leonard really couldn’t help but laugh at that, despite the rush of warmth that came with hearing Jim saying those words back. He really didn’t think it would be that easy. “Wow, you really ain’t as smooth as I thought you were, kid.”

“Maybe I’m a bit more invested in this than I would be with some random hookup,” Jim admitted, biting his lip as he told Leonard all he really needed to know for now. Jim really felt the same way, he wanted to give this a shot too. This may be going very differently than how Leonard had planned, but that was mostly because he never allowed himself to dream it would go this well.

“And what is this?” Leonard asked, more out of curiosity than concern. In only two short sentences, Jim had made it pretty clear that he wasn’t just trying to shift them over to friends with benefits.

“Everything, Bones,” Jim said, blue eyes wide with a world’s worth of happiness, devotion, and  _ love _ . Leonard didn’t think he’d ever seen Jim as wide open and genuine as he was seeing him right now. And, really, the only reasonable response to that was for Leonard to kiss him again. So he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Hannah for the inspo! 
> 
> I had a ton of fun writing this, and hope you enjoyed reading it :)
> 
> Come hang out with me on tumblr: tochaoticallygo.tumblr.com


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